Lessons on Preaching from Llloyd-Jones (2)

Lloyd-Jones has also helped me think about the mechanics of sermon preparation.  In the past, I think I’ve erred by relying almost exclusively on commentaries in my preparation, in addition of course to prayerful reflection on the text.  As I’ve grown I’ve learned that I really need to use systematic theology in my sermon preparation.  I need to look at my passage through the lens of doctrine.  A lot of times commentaries are focused on particular concerns, and I’ve found that using systematic theology as well as commentaries adds another layer of richness to my understanding of the passage.

Lloyd-Jones writes:

“Systematic theology, this body of truth which is derived from the Scripture, should always be present as a background and as a controlling influence on his preaching” (66).

“If you have truly understood the verse or passage you will arrive at a doctrine, a particular doctrine, which is part of the whole message of the Bible.  It is your business to search for this and to seek it diligently” (76).

I’m sure this could be taken too far, or misunderstood.  For example, I don’t think there is one doctrine for every single passage, in a formulaic way.  Nevertheless, I think Lloyd-Jones is saying something important here, and its helpful me to add a new stage in my sermon preparation.  The logical order of sermon preparation used to be:

(1) exegesis of the biblical text –> (2) application of that text to people –> (3) organization of all the material into sermon form (including illustration, thesis, main points, etc).

Now I try to do this: (1) exegesis of the text –> (2) systematization of that exegesis in light of doctrine –> (3) application based on the relevance of that doctrine for my listeners –> (4) organization of all the material into sermon form.

What I find is that this new second stage not only enriches my basic content by helping me view the meaning of the text within a larger context and from a number of different angles, but it also opens up new avenues in terms of application.

I don’t know if anybody else finds this necessary, but it helps me a ton!

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Shelob

I’ve finisehd The Two Towers. I’m 2/3 done in my slow trek through The Lord of the Rings. The last three chapters were terrifically exciting, and terrifying in their presentation of Sam and Frodo journeying into Shelob’s lair. I found Shelob to be a fascinating character. Tolkien tells you a lot more about her than is revealed in the movies. In the book, Gollum worships her (724). Also, she is revealed to be older even than Sauron (723), and known to Sauron, who sends her prisoners for her to make prey of (724). Here is a sample from this section, right after Frodo lights the Phial of Galadriel:

“But other potencies there are in Middle-earth, powers of night, and they are old and strong. And She that walked in the darkness had heard the Elves cry that cry far back in the deeps of time, and she had not heeded it, and it did not daunt her now. Even as Frodo spoke he felt a grace malice bent upon him, and a deadly regard considering him. Not far down the tunnel, between them and the opening where they had reeled and stumbled, he was aware of eyes growing visible, two great clusters of many-windowed eyes – the coming menace was unmasked at last. The radiance of the star-glass was broken and thrown back from their thousand facets, but behind the glitter a pale deadly fire began steadily to glow within, a flame kindled in some deep pit of evil thought. Monstrous and abominable eyes they were, bestial and yet filled with purpose and with hideous delight, gloating over their prey trapped beyond all hope and escape” (720).

Peter Jackson did an awesome job bringing this story to the big screen, but no movie could ever make a creature as terrifying as this one in the book!!

This is one example of what I see thus far as the greatest theme of Tolkien’s work – its vivid presentation of the nature of evil as seductive, oppresive, terrifying, and utterly dark and terrible.

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Living for the Glory of God

One of the foundational pillars in my philosophy of ministry is the priority of grace.  I’ve written before about how my time at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis helped formulate this conviction in me, and now the idea that grace alone can change a sinful heart probably leaves a stamp on every sermon that I preach, and every day that I live in ministry – or at least I hope it does! During the Gospel Coalition 2009 National Conference, right before graduating from Covenant, I remember a second pillar in my philosophy of ministry being kindled as I listened to Tim Keller’s talk The Grand Demythologizer: The Gospel and Idolatry. I’ll never forget listening to his last sentence – “do you know how to take the gospel to the idols?” – and thinking afterwards, “I can never preach or think about ministry in the same away again after hearing this – understanding idols will transform my preaching as much as learning about grace at Covenant Seminary.”

The other night, in the midst of an evening of thinking about my ministry here and wrestling with God a little bit in prayer, I stumbled upon John Piper’s recent interview of Louis Giglio and God struck me with something that’s been revolving around in my heart ever since. Throughout late high school and college I was fairly involved in going to Passion concerts, 722 events, and the 2000 OneDay in Texas, so I’ve benefited a ton from Louie’s ministry, and I’ve been familiar with some of the main themes of his teaching.  But I was really struck afresh by Louie’s discussion of the glory of God as one of his central ministry pillars.  As I was listening, I realized, this is a missing pillar in my philosophy of ministry. I’ve emphasized grace, I’ve even emphasized grace vs. idols, but I’ve not done so against a backdrop of the infinite weight and majesty of God (or at least as well as I could have).  Of course I’ve always believed it.  But it hasn’t wiggled its way down into the core of how I operate, such that I see on every page of the Bible and it leaks out in every sermon, every counseling session, every pastoral moment.  I’ve emphasized the sweetness of the gospel but not always its grandeur.  I’ve pointed students to the comfort and forgiveness of Christ, but not always to his enthralling worth and majesty, and his claim on our lives.  I want to grow in seeing for myself, and helping others see, that the gospel invites us to continually sacrifice ourselves to His cause, His fame, His renown – and that doing so is life.

I’d just been praying recently, “God, what is your passion and heart for our youth ministry’s future?” and didn’t feel as if I’d received an answer yet.  This was the answer.  God’s passion for our youth ministry is that it would be aflame with students who are living for his glory alone.  Students whose daily bread is to see His name and His renown advanced in their schools and communities. Students who want to raise a banner for Christ in their generation all across the San Gabriel Valley. I know this can happen, even with teenagers, because I’ve seen it at passion concerts through Louie’s ministry in the past.  I also saw it on a smaller scale at various times in my youth group back in Augusta.  Oh, that it would happen here.

Seeing afresh God’s heart for our youth ministry is so refreshing and clarifying.  Thank you God for helping us see the target.  Help us to aim for it with wisdom, and pull the trigger with courage.  Be glorified in our midst, Living God.

As I was walking home today from Starbucks thinking about this, I felt this unbelievable weight, like, “wow, its real.  God really is there, and He is big enough to live for.”  I also felt a rush of courage.  If this is what we’re fighting for, what can stop us?

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Lessons on Preaching from Lloyd-Jones (1)

I’ve been slowly chipping away at Martin Lloyd-Jones Preaching and Preachers this year.  In the next few posts, I want to share some of the ways it has helped me.  The first has to do with what preaching that is both Christ-centered and expository looks like.  An abiding intellectual struggle of mine over the last 2 years or so has been how exactly to preach Christ from various different kinds of biblical texts.  Put simply, here was the issue: if the goal of expository preaching is to say the meaning of the text from which I am preaching, how do I “get to” the gospel in the sermon when I don’t see a clear gospel inroad in the passage?  The entire purpose of expository preaching is to let the text speak for itself, rather than adjust and modify it according to our own systems and ideas.  Is it, then, “imposing a system” onto the text to speak of propitiation while preaching in Proverbs, or atonement in James, or justification in Esther?  Its a complex question, involving issues as basic as how we define the gospel and as practical as how large of a text we choose to preach from.

On the top of p. 67 I had a breakthrough.  Lloyd-Jones is writing:

“In New Testament times, and in the early days of the Christian church, they did not preach in the manner that has become customary with us.  They did not take a text out of the New Testament and analyze it and expound it and then apply it, because they did not have the New Testament.  Well, what did they preach?  They preached the great message that had been committed to them, this great body of truth, this whole doctrine of salvation.  My argument is that this is what we should always be doing, though we do it through individual expositions of particular texts.  That is, to me, in general the relationship between theology and preaching.”

Reading this started a chain of thought about why we choose particular texts to preach from in the first place.  I started to see that the importance of preaching the meaning of a particular passage must be balanced with the more general responsibility to preach the gospel message of all of Scripture.  At the top of the page I wrote: “the goal of a sermon is not merely to exegete a text.  Its to exegete a text in relation to its entire canonical context, the biblical gospel narrative of God redeeming His people through Christ.”  In other words, we should preach the meaning of the text.  But that very meaning is determined in part by context.  And the ultimate context of any text (at least for someone who accepts biblical inspiration) is the entire canon of Scripture, which must be interpreted as a whole even as it plays a role in helping us interpret individual texts.  Thus the Bible doesn’t merely define the gospel.  Once this is so, the gospel then helps us turn back around and interpret the Bible itself.  Once we’ve seen the whole from enough the particulars, the whole helps us in turn see the remaining particulars.

In other words, Christ is the meaning of every book of the Bible, because meaning is determined by context.  Or as my Dad once put it, “What defines the gospel is the Bible.  What interprets the Bible correctly is a hermeneutic centered on Jesus Christ crucified, the all-sufficient Savior of sinners, who gives himself away on terms of radical grace to all alike.”

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Quotes on Preaching

These two quotes on preaching really encourage me, because if Spurgeon and Lloyd-Jones felt this way, there is hope for all of us!

“Any man who has had some glimpse of what it is to preach will inevitably feel that he has never preached.  But he will go on trying, hoping that by the grace of God he may one day truly preach” (Martin Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers [Zondervan, 1971], 99).

“There is no good preacher who is not moved almost to the point of tears at the end of every sermon at how poor was the message he just delivered” (Charles Spurgeon, quoted by Bryan Chapell at 4:50 of this video).

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Catalina Island

Headed to Catalina Island for a camping trip at the Two Harbors campground with the youth for the next several days, and then to Missouri for a service trip later this month. I’m excited to check out Catalina Island!  I’ve always wanted to go.

Light posting ahead…

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Resurrection as the Goal of the Old Testament

I just read through the last few chapters of Acts this morning (catching up on a bit of tardy Bible reading), and found it interesting that Paul repeatedly identifies his hope in the resurrection from the dead as the reason he is on trial.

23:6: “It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.”

24:21: “It is with respect to the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial before you this day.”

26:7-8: “I stand here on trial because of my hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain, as they earnestly worship night and day. And for this hope I am accused by Jews, O king! Why is it thought incredible by any of you that God raises the dead?

Its interesting that in this last passage he refers to the resurrection as “the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain.”  Evidently Paul sees the resurrection as the fulfillment and goal of the Old Testament.  And from one more statement it appears this was not Christ’s resurrection alone, but the more general resurrection inaugurated and typified in Christ’s resurrection:

26:22-23: “I stand here testifying both to small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.”

I wonder if this is also why Paul says in 13:32-33 that “what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus” before quoting a number of Old Testament texts.

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Favorite Philosophers (4): Rene Descartes

If I had to name who I think were the top 5 most significant philosophers in Western history, I would probably go with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant.  The first 3 formed the backbone against which all Western thought had to react, and the latter two both marked crucial turning points.  Descartes marked the turn towards modernism with his emphasis on individual human reason as the epistemological starting point, and Kant paved the way towards postmodernism by limiting human knowledge to the phenomenal realm, i.e., reality in its appearance to us as opposed to reality in itself.

Leslie Newbigin suggests that the centerpiece of Descartes’ method was the critical principle: de omnibus dubitandum, “all things are to be doubted” (Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship [Eerdmans, 1995], pp. 21-25).  Every truth claim is open to doubt, and only those which are indubitable in the face of human reason should remain.  I agree with Newbigin, however, that Descartes’ critical principle itself rests upon faith – specifically, faith in the possibility and reliability of an individual knower’s doubt.  In order to doubt, I must first momentarily suspend doubt about doubt.  I must have faith in doubt.  In other words, with a hidden inconsistency in Descartes’ system, the critical principle itself is exempt from the principle of that all things are to be doubted.  De omnibus dubitandum - except for the principle de omnibus dubitandum. Descartes is seeking to completely start over and assume nothing, but smuggled in the back door is a whole posture towards knowledge and reality that assumes so much.  Its like someone in a relationship who has messed up relationships in the past and is therefore scared to make any decisions or changes in this relationship.  But that very posture towards relationships is itself a decision, more likely destroy the relationship than any other.  Human beings are finite, and no finite thing can approach reality or knowledge “standing still.”  We are all already committed.  Already moving.  Already decided.  Already believing.

The ultimate problem with Descartes’ method, it seems to me, is that it seeks to find certainty without reference to God.  He has sought to prove God as a conclusion without starting with God as a premise.  But if God is real, surely by His very nature He must the starting point of our method (for in him we live and move and have our being).  God should be the premise, not merely the conclusion.  He must shape the way we know.  As Newbigin puts it: “if the biblical story is true, the kind of certainty proper to a human being will be one which rests on the fidelity of God, not upon the competence of the human knower.  It will be a kind of certainty which is inseparable from gratitude and trust” (idem, 28).

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